I agree that deception characterizes the US response to the financial crisis and that policy responses have disproportionately benefited elites, facilitating the transfer of wealth from the many to the few.

Here is an excerpt from some of my work on the financial crisis:

The financial crisis that began in 2007
ushered in an era of disaster capitalism and economic austerity measures that
further impoverished populations and set the stage for significant curtailments
of economic access and political liberties.[i]
The larger economic crisis stemmed from transnational capitalist
over-production and growing global inequality. The specific financial crisis
stemmed directly from institutionalized greed and corruption in the U.S. (and
to a lesser extent western European) real-estate, stock, and bond markets. The
powerful financial agents that created the financial crisis were able to use it
to wreck the finances of public entities, thereby creating contexts for the
selling off of public assets and enforced economic austerity. For instance, Goldman and
J.P. Morgan indebted local municipal entities and school districts by selling
interest rate swaps that ended up exponentially increasing the interest rates
these public entities were forced to pay on their debt, resulting in
bankruptcies, raided public pensions, and/or higher local taxes.[ii]
Goldman and other investment banks also sold synthetic collateralized debt
obligations to public entities, which they subsequently betted against.[iii]
The US government declined to prosecute those financial agents responsible for
the crisis, for betting against clients, and for profiteering subsequently in
rampant foreclosure fraud.[iv]

The economic shock to the lower and middle-classes caused by skyrocketing
unemployment and constricted access to capital was met with the logic of
structural adjustment in many regions of the world, especially the U.S. and
parts of Europe (e.g., Greece, and Latvia). Austerity was implemented as states
slashed spending on social-welfare and education programs. The federal
government in the U.S. declined to adequately supplement local (i.e., state)
funding, thereby ensuring that austerity would prevail despite the pleas of
social-welfare activists and educators.

The economic
dispossession of the populace is not restricted to the U.S. but can also be
found in Europe’s austerity measures, particularly around the European
periphery. The real economic contagion afflicting Europe is the austerity-driven
“shock doctrine” of financial warfare.[v]
Countries such as Greece and Belarus were subject to extreme pressure by the
IMF and European agencies to sell off national resources such as Greece’s
Hellenic Telecommunications Organization and one of Belarus’ most valued state resources,
Belaruskali, a potash company.[vi]Greek “lawmakers” voted for austerity
and for selling off national assets at the end of June 2011, against the
popular will of Greek citizens.[vii]
The agreement reached by Greek officials calls for privatization of 50 billion
euros in state assets, including ports, telecommunications, real estate, and
shares of the public power corporation, in addition to more than 2 billion Euros
in cuts to health care and social assistance. Ireland, Portugal, and Spain are
slated for the same outcome by international speculators preying upon
fire-sales of privatized assets.

European
assets are being acquired by wealthy transnational corporations, billionaire
investors, and Chinese sovereign wealth funds. Acquisitions are reorganized to
improve efficiencies, primarily by eliminating employees, or are simply
stripped of assets and disassembled or resold. The process of privatization essentially
shifts assets from the larger population to the control of global financial
elites, leaving populaces and their local community services bankrupt.

In contrast to the eroding status of the liberal economic subject, the
economic subject of might—the modern transnational corporation—grew in power
and influence during the great economic contraction. In 2011, Bloomberg news
reported that “Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s unprecedented effort
to keep the economy from plunging into depression included lending banks and
other companies as much as $1.2 trillion of public money, about the same amount
U.S. homeowners currently owe on 6.5 million delinquent and foreclosed
mortgages.”[viii]In 2009, Graham Bowley reported in The New York Times that the
federal financial “bailout helps fuel a new era of Wall Street wealth” enabling
“hefty bonuses” to corporate Wall Street executives.[ix]Goldman
Sachs alone received $70 billion in combined funds from TARP, the Federal
Reserve, AIG, and the FDIC.[x]Economist Simon Johnson observed: "The
US increasingly displays characteristics that we have seen many times in
middle-income “emerging markets” – new dimensions of vast inequality, forms of
financial instability that benefit the best connected, and consistently easy
credit for the privileged."[xi]
Concluding that little more could be extracted from the spent U.S. consumer, investment
banks and hedge funds turned in earnest to commodities. U.S. corporations
started selling more products and services abroad, facilitating the record
earnings reported in 2011 despite ongoing contraction of the US labor market.

About Me

I am a Professor at a large public university. I study political economy and biopolitics (the politics of life). My interests are diverse but are broadly concerned with economic, social and environmental justice. I have published 5 books: Crisis Communication, Liberal Democracy and Ecological Sustainability: The Threat of Financial and Energy Complexes in the Twenty-First Century (2016); Fukusima and the Privatization of Risk (2013); Constructing Autism (2005); Governmentality, Biopower and Everyday Life (2008/2011); Governing Childhood (2010).
I also participated in an edited collection on Fukushima: Fukushima: Dispossession or Denuclearization (2014).